


Thus With a Kiss

by cest_what



Category: Kamen Rider Wizard
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 12:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2309651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cest_what/pseuds/cest_what
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with Kousuke walking in on Shunpei being kissed by a Phantom, and goes sharply downhill from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thus With a Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Set between the end of the series and the _Great War_ movie.

Kousuke could confidently say that whatever he had expected to find at the ring shop, it was not an incredibly lovely woman kissing Shunpei.

A _Huhhh?_ escaped his mouth and he stumbled over the doorstep, Rinko’s voice in his ear going tinny and distant as he groped for the door frame with the hand holding his phone.

Wajima-san had been leaving Shunpei in sole charge of the shop more often lately. Right now Shunpei was standing stock still in the middle of the display cases, his shoulders tense and high. They dropped as Kousuke stared, everything about him going lax. The woman pulled back, her hands on either side of Shunpei’s face still holding him in place. Shunpei must have closed his eyes at some point during the kiss; his eyelashes were trembling, something startled about him still.

Kousuke, dazed, brought the phone back to his ear to hear, _“… and be careful! Mayu-chan is still too dizzy to stand from whatever this Phantom’s poison is. Don’t get close.”_

She disconnected. At the same moment, the woman let go of Shunpei, and he fell backwards.

At first it was an oddly graceful fall, Shunpei’s lashes heavy over his closed eyes, his ridiculous parti-coloured hoodie fluttering. Then he crashed against the shop counter, his limbs folding into a heap on the floor.

He made a small, pained sound and struggled to sit up, before slumping back once more.

 _Oh, thank god,_ Kousuke thought. _She’s the Phantom._ He thought his brain might have broken if he’d had to rearrange his worldview to include Shunpei recreationally kissing beautiful women.

“Hey!” he objected. “You there, what are you doing?”

She turned to look at him, one hand coming up to touch her mouth. It was unusually dark and glistening, he noticed. She smiled.

“Oh, the one who used to be an archetype mage,” she said. “You’re useless now, aren’t you? Like this one.” She prodded Shunpei with her toe.

Kousuke chose to ignore the first part of that. He frowned. “Hey, _hey,_ now. He may be useless, but that doesn’t mean you can go about kicking him like some disobedient puppy.”

He couldn’t help glancing at Shunpei then and thinking how very much he did look like a kicked puppy. It was something about the shaggy fringe in his eyes, and the sprawl of his legs. Kousuke’s eyes narrowed. Actually, Shunpei didn’t look good at all. His eyes weren’t focusing, and there was a blueish tinge to his cheeks.

Kousuke felt anger beginning to coil inside, where Chimera used to be. He jerked his chin toward Shunpei. “How long is that going to last?” he demanded. “And hey, stop that! What are you looking for? Stop stealing from the ring shop!”

She’d begun going through the wares on display, turfing them out onto the floor as they failed to meet whatever criteria she was using for her search. Kousuke launched himself at her, aiming to tackle her around the waist. She turned, quick as a snake, and backhanded him. He crashed into the counter beside Shunpei.

“How long?” she asked idly, continuing to rummage. Kousuke groaned, sitting up. “About twenty minutes, I suppose.” She held something up to the light, then tossed it aside. “Unlike that girl mage, I gave this one enough to kill him, so … yes, it should be another twenty minutes or so until he dies of the poison on his lips.”

_“What?”_

Kousuke turned to Shunpei, wide-eyed. There was a black stain on Shunpei’s lips, Kousuke realised. He rubbed at it frantically with his sleeve, trying to get it off Shunpei’s mouth. Shunpei made a weak sound of protest, muffled by Kousuke’s sleeve.

The Phantom glanced over her shoulder and laughed. “It won’t come off that way,” she said. “That poison can only be transferred with a kiss.” She held her fingertips to her mouth and mockingly blew him one. Kousuke ducked, just in case. She laughed again.

“Why, you …” Kousuke growled. He grabbed onto the top of the counter and dragged himself to his feet. Perhaps he couldn’t defeat Phantoms on his own anymore, but if he could keep her busy until Rinko and Mayu could get here, Mayu might be able to defeat her and nullify the poison in time.

He gave a yell and launched himself at her again.

This time she transformed as she turned, her lovely features becoming a jagged and monstrous blue, spines chasing themselves across her cheeks. She was still kind of alluring as monsters went, and that was a thought Kousuke was never going to admit he’d had. But it might mean he’d make fun of Shunpei less when –

If. _Damnit._

He ducked the first swing of the Phantom’s spiked fist, dancing around to her other side and landing a hit that seemed to annoy her even if it didn’t deal much damage.

She _tsked_. “I dislike violence,” she commented. “But I suppose you won’t let me close enough for a kiss, now, so I’ve no choice.”

She scythed a foot through the air, blue spikes on her heel dripping what might have been venom, which Kousuke rolled over a display case to avoid. He dove back under the case, sliding on his belly, and grabbed her other foot, barely avoiding the spikes but successfully jerking her off-balance. She planted a hand and flipped, regaining her feet, and kicked a display cabinet onto him.

He didn’t roll quickly enough to avoid the cabinet landing bruisingly on his shoulder.

While he was extricating himself, cursing and trying to pretend his eyes weren’t watering, the Phantom gave a cry of discovery and fished something out of the wreckage of a worktable. It was a ring, and by the size and colour of the stone, Kousuke guessed it was a magic ring.

She held it up to the light, her expression covetous.

“Why –” Kousuke coughed, dragging himself to his feet. “Why do you want that?”

Her spiny fist closed over it. “If mages can use rings, it must be possible to adapt them so that a _particularly_ resourceful Phantom can use them too.” She smiled. “That mage and her detective got away before I could take her rings, but this … ought to do just fine.”

Kousuke kicked away the broken remnants of the cabinet door. He cricked his neck to either side, trying to convince his body it wasn’t as banged up as it felt. Then he dropped into a fighting stance, blocking the door.

He dragged out a cocky grin from somewhere. “I’m not sure that ring will suit you,” he said. “Not to be insulting, but you kind of need a bit more charisma to carry off the magic ring look.”

She raised her eyebrows. “It is regrettably gaudy,” she agreed. She paused, and added delicately, “Speaking of regrettable fashion … shouldn’t you be more concerned about your friend over there?”

And damn it, Kousuke couldn’t keep from glancing over at Shunpei, now completely still on the floor.

He corrected his mistake immediately, but it was too late to avoid her blow. Kousuke crashed across the room, landing in a heavy sprawl on the stairs.

By the time his head stopped spinning enough for him to sit up, the Phantom was gone.

“Oi,” he croaked. He started to crawl over to Shunpei, his body yelling objections all the way. He coughed. “Shunpei. Hey. You better not be dead.”

Shunpei’s chest was still rising with rapid, shallow breaths. His skin had lost even more colour, though, and the stain on his lips stood out more starkly than before.

She’d said she’d given him enough poison to kill him. That sounded like if there was less poison – if Kousuke could get some of it off – it wouldn’t kill him. Kousuke rubbed at Shunpei’s mouth again, with his thumb this time. It didn’t make any difference.

“You stupid idiot,” Kousuke whispered. He couldn’t stop sweeping his thumb over Shunpei’s mouth. “You stupid … at least wait till Haruto’s back before you pull this shit. Who’s gonna tell him? You better be around to tell him, because I’m –” His voice cracked and he broke off.

It was ridiculous, Shunpei lying so still and pale like this. He was the brightest person Kousuke knew. He was –

The poison could only be transferred with a kiss, she’d said.

“Oh,” Kousuke said. He chewed on his lip, staring at Shunpei’s mouth. _A pinch is a chance_ , he found himself thinking, nonsensically.

 _Fuck it._ If he was going to do it, he’d just do it. At least Chimera wasn’t there to laugh at him.

He bent over Shunpei, the hot ache in his shoulder flaring. It had to be an open-mouthed kiss, because Shunpei’s mouth was open as he dragged in stuttering gasps of air.

Kousuke pressed his mouth to Shunpei’s. A moment later he felt Shunpei respond with a startled, indrawn breath, stealing the air from Kousuke’s mouth. His shoulders under Kousuke’s hands went stiff too, his whole body jerking in surprise.

Kousuke had actually not kissed a lot of people. There weren’t many people he would have admitted it to – Haruto, maybe – but study and fieldwork and long nights of research had taken most of his time and attention while he was a student, and then when Chimera chose him he’d had to focus on survival above all else. That was probably why this kiss was affecting him the way it was.

Shunpei’s mouth was soft, and as Kousuke pressed less tentatively, Shunpei made a wordless, questioning sound into the kiss. Kousuke felt the faint heat of Shunpei’s breath against his lower lip. His hands were still on Shunpei’s shoulders. Under his thumb, Kousuke felt Shunpei’s rabbiting pulse at the juncture of his neck and collarbone.

Shunpei felt fragile and unbearably hot, and Kousuke’s head was swimming.

The dizziness reached a sick pitch, and was joined by a sharp stab of pain in his temple. Bells were sounding in his head.

He toppled over.

“Haruto-san?” Shunpei mumbled.

“ _Hey_ ,” Kousuke managed, because wow, rude.

A hand pushed at his shoulder, weakly, and he rolled over and stared up at Shunpei. Shunpei was staring down at him with muzzy confusion. He still looked terrible, but it was a regular kind of terrible, now, not the awful, still, dying kind of terrible. Somewhere a rush of relief spilled through Kousuke, but it was muffled under how terrible _he_ felt.

Shunpei was touching his own mouth. His eyes were huge. “Did you …?”

“You should find a new lip gloss,” Kousuke said, closing his eyes over the pounding of his headache. “I’m not doing that again if you keep using that one.”

“ _What?_ ”

Kousuke’s eyes jerked open again. “What? What?” he said. Then his own words replayed for him, and his gaze flew to Shunpei’s wide eyes.

“Oh,” said Kousuke. “Shit.”

(The more terrible moment was the one just after that, when Kousuke realised that the tolling of bells he’d heard when he kissed Shunpei hadn’t been his headache, but the bell over the shop door. Rinko was supposed to be letting Mayu lean on her, but she went into such helpless paroxysms of laughter after that that Mayu had to hold her up.)


End file.
